With Harrison Ford otherwise engaged filming Indiana Jones's latest escapade, the search for European golf's holy grail has been placed in the hands of Justin Rose, who tees off in the first round of the US Open today carrying the burden of expectations - some might call it a curse - that comes with being the favourite to end the lamentable European record in major championships.

Many others have filled this role before and it is fair to say that few have enjoyed it. As recently as April, Henrik Stenson was strongly fancied to win the US Masters - a fashionable tip that ended with a tie for 17th place and an uncharacteristic moaning from the Swede about the set-up of the golf course.

Before Stenson the likes of Paul Casey, Sergio García, Luke Donald, Padraig Harrington and, of course, Colin Montgomerie have all arrived at the site of a major championship with high hopes, only to depart with a decent-sized cheque and the tiresome prospect of fielding even more questions about Europe's continuing drought in the majors.

Montgomerie, who cut a forlorn figure yesterday as he played a practice round accompanied only by his $80-a-day caddie Billy Goddard, can probably be discounted this week on account of his recent run of shocking form, and the likes of Harrington and Donald, both of whom have games suited to the tight fairways and terrifying greens of a US Open, have earned the right to arrive at places like Oakmont with justifiable optimism in their hearts. But Rose, in the words of his new coach Nick Bradley, "looks ready to win one of these".

To which a cynic might reply: "So have many Europeans before him and look what happened to them." Bradley does not do cynicism, however, and nor does he do modesty about either himself or his client.

"A year ago he was 126th in the world and now he is 17th," he said. "We are clearly doing the right things. Historically, if you look at it, players who try to get up to the next level by changing things always find themselves in trouble. We just need to stick to what we are doing and everything will work out the way we want it. I see in Justin the 1989-90 model of Nick Faldo - a precision player who is a superior manager."

Rose, who does traditional English modesty as well as he does 210-yard five-irons to a tight pin, might once have balked to hear someone close to him speaking in such aggressively confident terms. But with the arrival of Bradley, who took the place of his long-time coach David Leadbetter, has come changes to his swing and even greater changes to his attitude.

"It is quite true that what Nick says isn't very English. Some might frown on American bravado but in athletics I have come to favour the American way; that bold self-belief is what it takes," Rose said.

To help bolster his player's self-belief, Bradley prepares what he described as "very powerful 200-word documents" setting out goals for the tournament that lies ahead. He then gets Rose to meditate while he reads the document over and over. "Ask me on Sunday," the coach said yesterday when asked what was in the document.

Rose was not for telling, either. "Nick has a good feel for how to reach me. He keeps it simple and he has given me the information very slowly. I understand it better, so it's kept me from searching, and it suits me because it turns out I'm a slow learner," said the player who has recovered from the back injury that has limited his appearances to just two events in the past two months.

"I am coming into a tournament 100% fit for the first time since February [when he was knocked out in the quarter-final of the World Match Play at Tucson]. I also think the course suits me," he said. "It has a lot of variation; short holes, long holes, right to left, left to right. So, yes, I'm feeling confident."